Early tech giants like Google and AWS built monopolies because their potential wasn't widely understood, allowing them to grow without intense competition. In contrast, because everyone knows AI will be massive, the resulting competition and capital influx make it difficult for any single player to establish a monopoly.

Contrary to the belief that number two players can be viable, most tech markets are winner-take-all. The market leader captures the vast majority of economic value, making investments in second or third-place companies extremely risky.

A company's monopoly power can be measured not just by its pricing power, but by the 'noneconomic costs' it imposes on society. Dominant platforms can ignore negative externalities, like their product's impact on teen mental health, because their market position insulates them from accountability and user churn.

Bill Gurley questions if America truly benefits from trillion-dollar tech monopolies. He suggests these massive market caps could indicate a lack of "pure competition," where excessive profits are captured by a few giants instead of benefiting consumers through lower prices.

While many investors hunt for pure monopolies, most tech markets naturally support a handful of large players in an oligopoly structure. Markets like payments (Stripe, Adyen, PayPal) demonstrate that multiple large, successful companies can coexist, a crucial distinction for market analysis and investment strategy.

In its failed merger attempt, Cisco argued its market competitors included Sam's Club, a claim regulators rejected. This illustrates that the core of an antitrust case is often not the raw market share number, but the highly debatable and often opaque definition of the market itself, which can be skewed by paid economists.

Nvidia's Jensen Huang exemplifies Peter Thiel's theory: dominant companies describe their market as vast and hyper-competitive (e.g., "technology") to avoid regulatory scrutiny. In contrast, non-dominant players define their niche narrowly to appear unique and defensible to investors.

According to Peter Thiel, founders who boast about multiple revenue streams or distribution channels are unintentionally revealing a critical weakness. The most successful companies typically have one dominant, highly effective revenue model and one primary acquisition channel driving their growth.

Following Peter Thiel's theory, dominant companies like Nvidia publicly frame their market as "incredibly competitive" to avoid antitrust scrutiny. In contrast, companies in competitive markets pretend to have a monopoly to attract investors.